Five men were charged Wednesday in the death of a Milwaukee rapper who went missing on New Year’s Day and turned out to be the victim of a gruesome gang homicide, complaints say.

Investigators were searching for the victim’s body Wednesday at an area landfill.

The missing rapper is identified in the criminal complaint as Ebony Young, a female. The victim had previously been identified as Evon Young, 22, also known as Yung LT, during the public plea for information about his whereabouts.

One of the defendants charged Wednesday told investigators he believed Young was a male, and other witnesses all referred to Young as a male. The charges, in two separate complaints, do not suggest in any way that Young’s transgendered status played any role in the defendants’ motivation for the attack.

According to the complaints:

Young’s mother first reported Young missing on Jan. 2 after Young failed to show up at his job or a meeting with his mother and couldn’t be reached. His roommate told police that Young had gone outside their house near N. 52nd St. and W. Custer Ave. about 10:30 p.m. Jan. 1, got in a car and never came back.

Young’s family spread fliers about his disappearance and went on television seeking help in finding him. Two other young men also had disappeared earlier New Year’s Day — downtown and in Cedarburg — after drinking with friends.

Milwaukee police detectives working several angles quickly began to put the lie to Young’s roommate’s story.

Young’s mother had found a cellphone near where the roommate said Young had gotten in a car, and the last call made on it was Jan. 1. About a week later, she turned it over to police, who traced it to Victor Stewart and Ashanti Mcalister. Stewart was a suspect in the theft of his wife’s car, an Impala like the one a witness had seen idling near Young’s house the night of Jan. 1.

But Stewart’s wife later admitted she had lied about the car being stolen because she was angry that Stewart took it on Jan. 1 and didn’t return until about 6 a.m. Jan. 2, causing her to miss work. When he did come back, the car smelled strongly of bleach. A bottle of bleach was inside the car, and she placed it under her sink at home. Police later found Stewart’s fingerprint in the car, on the bleach bottle and a piece of duct tape recovered from the basement where Young was killed.

Young’s roommate, Billy R. Griffin, 26, had initially told police that Young got into a car with someone on Jan. 1 and never returned. But in the complaint, he admits that Stewart, 27, Mcalister, 19, Ron Joseph Allen, 37, and Devin Lattrez Seaberry, 23, members of a street gang, had come to his house and said Young could not be trusted. They told Griffin he would be readmitted to the gang if he killed Young.

Instead, the complaints say, the others took Young to the basement, choked Young with a chain and taped a plastic bag over Young’s head while Mcalister held a gun. After Young passed out, the group beat Young with tools. Griffin said he couldn’t take watching and returned upstairs but later heard the others say they wanted to make sure Young was dead, then three gunshots.

The group later cleaned his basement with bleach, he told police, rolled Young’s body up in a sheet and took it to Stewart’s car, then to a trash bin at 8100 N. 84th St.

When police later went to that scene, they found a chain, some burned clothing and evidence a fire had been set in the garbage container. According to one of the complaints, investigators were searching a landfill Wednesday for Young’s body.

Stewart told police that the confrontation at Young’s house began with an argument over whether Young had assisted someone else in burglarizing the residence. Stewart told police that Young eventually admitted that role to Griffin.

Stewart also admitted to police that he tried to get Griffin to kill Young before the group took on the task, and that after the suffocation, strangulation and beating, Mcalister shot Young three times with a .22-caliber handgun.

Later that day, Griffin said, Stewart called him and said, “The deed is done,” and instructed him to tell people that Young had just left and never returned.

According to the complaints, police found eight blood samples on the walls, floor and on a bucket in Griffin’s basement. Two of the samples tested positive as female blood. DNA testing later matched the blood to samples taken from Young’s toothbrush, the complaints state.

Griffin, Stewart, Mcalister, Allen and Seaberry are all charged with first-degree intentional homicide, as parties to the crime.

All but Seaberry were being held at the Milwaukee County Jail. Seaberry was still being processed late Wednesday.

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